


Pauses in Time

by Oh_Hey_Its



Category: Tegan and Sara (Band)
Genre: F/F, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7028167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oh_Hey_Its/pseuds/Oh_Hey_Its
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rewritten/edited and improved versions of some of the oneshots I'd originally posted on Quinfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Five Letters is first! Who doesn't like the classic soulmates AU?

When I was eight years old, I got my first letter. I can remember vividly how the skin on the inside of my wrist began to smoke as I screamed in agony, my flesh sizzling. My mother had run to me then, wiping the tears of off my panic-stricken face and soothing my terror. She told me that I should be happy that I had finally received it, I was a late bloomer as far as those things went. All of the other kids in second grade already had one, two, three, even a full name by then.

After drying the tear tracks from my flushed face my mother had shown me my father’s name, forever imprinted on her own thin wrist, his neat cursive drawn smoothly on her pale skin. I remember looking at the hurriedly scrawled **T** on my own wrist; wondering how my soulmate could possibly have such awful handwriting, hating how it was permanently embedded into my skin.

 

The next letter came when I was ten, long after everybody else had received the full names of their other halves, giving me and that stupid lonely **T** weird looks. This time I was at school, on the playground. I remember how I had ran and hid in the tunnel of the slide that swirled around towards the ground, gritting my teeth in a desperate attempt to avoid crying out as an **E** joined the **T**. I hated them both together even more.

 

After that they came much more rapidly: first a **G** , followed by an **A** , before finally finishing with an **N**. I remember sitting down in my room one night, long after everyone else had gone to bed, and just staring at those five ugly letters. **TEGAN**. Five letters that made up the name of the person I was destined to be with for the rest of my life. It scared me. That fear brought with it the questions, the self doubt. What if this Tegan didn’t like me? What if I didn’t like her? What if she was unattractive or had weird smelling breath or was secretly a serial killer, or…? The list of possibilities grew impossibly larger until I was so overwhelmed that I could do nothing but stare dumbly at that ridiculous looking handwriting and think. Always thinking. I hated Tegan for making me feel so apprehensively confused.

 

When I finally turned eighteen I graduated high school and moved as far away from home as possible. I wanted nothing more than to escape my parent’s sickening love for one another, unconsciously suffocating me with the fact that they were happy and still madly in love with the person who matched the name and handwriting on the insides of their wrists. Meanwhile I was wavering in purgatory, unable to fathom that such a future would ever be possible for me. So, grumpily, I moved to began school in Montreal, on the other side of the country, barely managing to keep my grip on the hope that I might be able to figure myself out, to find the ever illusive Tegan. Of course, nothing ever goes quite as planned.

 

Within the first week of my move I met a barista at a coffee shop minutes from my cluttered apartment. As I gave her my order I felt what, at least in my mind, was some sort of pull towards her. She wasn’t wearing a name tag and so, fearing I would sound creepy if I asked for her name directly, I returned the following day. I can distinctly remember the sharp pang of disappointment that had dug into my gut like a dull knife as I read the letters that had been pinned onto her chest. Lisa. Not Tegan. I went home without ordering and cried, berating myself getting my hopes up. Her handwriting had been too neat anyways. I should have known better, I thought to myself, as I tried fruitlessly to fall asleep that night. My dreams were full of faceless women and tarnished joy.

 

And so it went on: the cabbie driving me home after a night of drinking whose name ended up being Shane, the dog-walker named Elizabeth who helped me pick up my papers after they’d fallen from my school books, the neighbor across the hall named June who I later found out wrote exclusively in cursive. How hard was it going to be to find Tegan? Why did I care so much anyways? My mother would reassure me over the phone, telling me not to look so hard, that we would find each other eventually. Everyone around me seemed to believe that same mysterious force who’d left the names on our skin would draw us together when the time was right, but I began to feel what hope I had left begin to slip from my grasp.

Maybe Tegan was dead. Maybe she knew who I am but hated me and wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe she never actually existed. Maybe I truly was destined to be lonely. I remember the hatred coming back even stronger than before, throwing myself into my studies in an attempt to subdue the anguish I was feeling inside.

 

For awhile my strategy seemed to work, and I was able to ignore those five letters on my wrist. Then it got to the point where even my schooling started to become not enough. I remember deciding that I was somehow going to prove that the name on my wrist didn’t define me, own me, control my existence. I slept with all kinds of women in my mangled attempt to restore my selfworth, taking them where ever I could. Graffiti covered bathroom stalls, grimy alleys, the torn leather back seats of cars. I was losing control, though I wouldn’t admit it myself, and with my grades slipping I began drinking heavily. I even neglected to call my parents, something I had always made sure I did regularly before then.

I didn’t want the pity from those around me as they reveled in their feelings of completeness, of love and happiness. They got to reap the benefits that resulted in being with your soulmate while I had to suffer, forgotten in their wake. Now not only did I hate Tegan, I hated who I was too.

 

After about a month and a half of this, I remember meeting a girl. At first I thought she was Tegan, still harboring that hope despite my lengthening doubts about the five letters on my wrist. Turned out that she wasn’t but I kissed her anyway. She told me later that night that her name was Emy.

The name on Emy’s arm, rounded and bubbly, spelled out Sarah. I remember cursing its closeness to my own name, but it wasn’t my handwriting. Tegan wasn’t even remotely like the name Emy anyway.

The next day we ran into each other again, exchanging phone numbers as she told me that she thought I was cute, that maybe we should ignore the stranger’s names on our arms and be with whoever we wanted to. Faced with the predicament I had found myself in, I couldn’t help but agree, and together we slipped into a relationship almost effortlessly. I began working hard in school again, stopped drinking altogether, and deleted every contact I had that was related to one of my random fucks. I firmly held onto the belief that Emy was all I needed, that we’d both managed to cheat the system and find a soulmate besides the one branded into our skin. I was truly happy again for the first time in a very long time.

Then one day Emy accidentally knocked over a woman in the grocery store whose list was written in rounded bubble letters and whose name was Sarah with an h on the end.

For all of her words on forgetting our true soulmates and becoming our own, Emy apologetically destroyed the idealistic what could have been of our relationship, leaving me alone once more. After that I started to think of nothing else but the fact that I knew Tegan would never show up and lead me away to the beautiful lives full of fullness that everyone else was getting to experience. At least this time, however, I had Emy and Sarah to help keep me afloat, the pair picking me up on the days when I couldn’t help but fall.

 

About a month and a half after Emy left me, a girl fell out of a tree and into my lap. I remember sitting there, stunned, as she stared up at me with the dorkiest gummy grin. Her eyes were bloodshot and hazy, glazed over, the sharp scent of weed coming off of her filthy and ripped clothing in waves. I noticed she was only wearing one shoe as I shoved her off of me in disgust and stalked away, ignoring what she cried out after me as she stumbled in my wake.

 

The next time I ran into the girl I was sitting on a wooden bench in the same park, nearby the same tree that the first incident had occurred. It was getting dark and I was just starting to think about packing up my things and heading back to my apartment when I heard somebody approach me, looking up to meet them.

I remember how I didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing the same clothing that she had on when I had first met her: black hoodie, ripped jeans. At least she had both shoes on this time, sole flapping uselessly from the right one. She wasn’t smiling this time.

“Can I help you?” I’d asked her grumpily.

“Uh yeah you’re kinda sitting on my bench.” Her voice had been so hoarse that I initially had a hard time deciphering her words. She’d cleared her throat as she finished, an action that seemed to trigger a coughing fit, wet and hacking as she bent over, bracing her hands on her knees.

I had cringed, standing up quickly and walking away as I heard her coughs turn into dry heaves and crackling wheezes.

  
_Not my problem_ I remember telling myself over and over in my head as I made my way home. Still, I couldn’t help but feel bad as I lay in my bed that night, the awful choking sound coming from her chest echoing in my ears as I tried to fall asleep.

 

I remember the third time we met very clearly. She saved me.

I had been out drinking way later than I should have, shuffling home beyond wasted. My phone had been blowing up, Emy calling and texting me worriedly until I finally got fed up and answered the next time she called, describing my surroundings the best I could with my slurred speech and slanting vision as she sighed on the other line and calmly told me to stay where I was.

I remember sitting on the curb when he grabbed me, just managing to let out a choked scream before his meaty hand had covered my mouth. He’d dragged me as I’d kicked and fought into a dingy alleyway littered with tall piles of ripped trash bags located around the back of the bar, unzipping his pants as he went. I could feel his foul breath on the back of my neck, sobbing hysterically. I knew what was going to happen, and I knew that I was powerless at this point to stop it.

  
Just as his hand moved from between his legs to mine, he was gone with a sickening thud.

I’d lay there mutely in shock, propped up against the cracked slimly brick of the bar behind me, watching a shadow knock him hard onto his back, getting one good hit before being thrown against the wall and crumpling lifelessly to the ground. I was knocked out of my trance-like state as I watched him kick the shadow over and over again in the chest, the snapping of bones audible. As he pulled the knife from his coat and plunged it deep beneath the shadow’s ribs, I began to scream.

 

I'd awoken in a hospital bed to something beeping, groaning as my eyes peeled open to meet the blinding lights above me. Sarah was there, holding my hand with both of hers as she watched me anxiously, her face drawn and pale.

“Oh my god you’re awake!” She’d cried, reaching over me to hit the call button and refusing to tell me where Emy was or what had happened. I was confused and slightly scared as the doctor came in and spoke with me quietly, handing me some clothes to put on, papers to sign. I was discharged quickly, a policewoman interviewing me on what I could remember from the events of the night before. I’d told her what I could, eager to find Emy. She went away after awhile and not long after, Emy appeared.

I remember how tightly drawn her face looked, the dark bags beneath her eyes ominous. She’d pulled me into a hug, telling me how happy she was that I was okay in my ear, rubbing my back as I held onto her tightly. Pulling away after a minute, she guided me to a nearby chair, crouching between my legs as I’d sat down.

“Sara, what do you remember about last night?” She’d asked carefully. I told her that a man had grabbed me, that a shadow had saved me. I told her that a knife was stuck beneath the shadow ribs. I asked her if the shadow was alive or not.

“Let me see your mark.” She’d whispered then. I’d pulled up my sleeve and she’d stared at it, brushing the very tips of her fingers along the marred skin before looking up and meeting my gaze.

“Sara… I’ve found her.”

 

I remember walking into her hospital room, cringing at the mechanical sound of the machines surrounding her hissing and clicking. There was a tube down her throat, needles poking into her arms and neck. My eyes had scanned the multitude of tattoos on her arms, finding her mark almost immediately. The shadow was the same girl who fell out of the tree, who said that I was sitting on her bench. My name in my neat measured handwriting lay in plain view on her boney wrist.

I sank down beside her and cried.

 

When she awoke she was terrified. I remember brushing away a few strands of sweaty, matted hair that was sticking to her forehead and cupping her wide jaw reassuringly as the swarm of doctors around her called out medical jargon to one another and pulled the tube from her throat. She’d coughed once it was gone, deep and chest rattling. Her eyes found the mark on my arm as she caught her breath, tracing it with her bandaged fingers. I refused to leave her side for a week straight until they discharged her, talking, reading her lines from my favorite books, watching movies on the laptop that Emy brought with her on one of her daily visits.

Slowly, hesitiantly, I began to fall into a love I never thought I would possibly be able to obtain.

 

It wasn’t easy. She told me one night after I’d brought her home with me and we lay on my bed together that she was kicked out of her house when she was fourteen for having a girl’s name on her arm and not a boy’s. She had turned to drugs for relief, for an escape from the harsh realities of life on the street. I held her while she went through withdrawal from those very drugs; rubbing her back as she heaved and heaved into the bucket I’d set beside the bed, as she sweat and shook deliriously. I changed the bandages covering the hole in her chest where the knife had nearly taken her life as it healed.

She, in turn, held me as nightmares of his hands on my body kept me up screaming at night, whispering sweet things into my hair softly and pulling my shaking body into the safety of her arms. She held my hand the say I brought her home to meet my parents, putting on a brave face even though I knew she was scared out of her wits. She always found the time to make sure she told me I was beautiful, to make sure I knew was wanted, I was loved.

The hatred began to melt away under her watchful gaze and careful touch. I felt a happiness that was much different than the emotion that I’d felt while I was with Emy. This one was different, full-bodied, without the distinction of something missing like it had been before. I felt complete for the first time in my life.

 

I remember our first kiss, soft and hesitant as our lips explored the person they’d been made for.

 

I remember the first time we made love, under dim light with gentle hands and soft gasps as our limbs discovered slick places and sweet spots on smooth skin.

 

 

 

Now we lay together, our bodies naked and tangled together, and breathe as one. My hatred and her trauma melt away as simply being close to one another quietly takes a precedent over everything else in our lives.

For years I couldn’t understand what a soulmate truly was, couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of someone made to fit like a puzzle piece into your soul, your very existence. Now, however, I understand why my parents act the way they do, why Emy was able to so easily leave what we had for the name on her wrist. What I have with Tegan I could never find with anyone else. It is the purest, rawest, form of love there is.

 

In the end there is a kind of relief when you discover that you aren’t truly fated to be alone in the universe. Nothing is sweeter, more secure than that feeling.

 

Home is being wrapped up in her arms, and that is the only place I’ll ever need to be.


	2. I'm on Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All angst tonight.... sorry not sorry?

Even though it’s still early, the neighbors are already blasting their pounding music and yelling in drunken happy voices. It is times like these when you wish the walls that surround you were thicker, your ears unhearing.

 

It’s been three months since you broke down and finally told Lindsey the truth. You’ve been alone ever since, the image of the girl you had tried so hard to love walking out the door for the last time without so much as a single look back, a single acknowledgement of what you shared together, stained into your mind like a scarlet letter.

It’s been five months since you’ve laid eyes on the woman who truly holds your heart. As you lay prone on your bed you can almost imagine that she’s beside you. But no… that weight pinning you down is the unrequited love you feel, suffocating in its intensity. Not her soothing presence. Sara has barely acknowledged your existence since you blurted out that you loved her at that last fateful show before the break and pressed a searing kiss onto her surprised lips. She wouldn’t look you in the eye after that, shoving you away and screaming at you, veins popping out of her neck. You’re sick, you’re fucked up, what the fuck is wrong with you? She’d spat before stalking away and slamming the door of your shared dressing room behind her. You haven’t heard from her since.

It was only later that you’d found out from your mother that Sara had moved in with Stacy, the sharp pang of hurt you’d felt after finding out only adding to the hatred you’d felt inside. Still, you don’t blame her for how she reacted, for what she said. Every word she’s sneered, her brow scrunched with in anger, was true.

 

Reaching blindly for the bottle beside your bed, you sit up, fingers grasping the cool glass forming the container’s neck as you bring it to your lips and taking a long scorching gulp. The whiskey burns your insides and makes your eyes water as it settles like a flame in your stomach. You take another sip, then another, until the bottle is empty and it falls from your loose fingertips to shatter on the floor beside your bed with a crash that echoes in your ears and bounces off of the walls long after the commotion ends.

The world swirls around you in a dizzying array of black and grey, the tattoos on your arms writhing. The yelling next door grows louder, rushing in your overwhelmed ears until you can listen to nothing else.

 

You miss her. God you miss her.

 

The phone on your bedside table rings but you’re too drunk to realize what is happening until the sound ceases and you find yourself falling backwards into drunken nothingness again. It goes off again and you manage to force your limbs to move this time as it buzzes, reaching blindly to where it lays glowing beside you. You miss it wholeheartedly, falling into a dazed heap, hands just managing to slightly break your fall as you skin meets the jagged shards of glass lying in glittering piles on the floor.

You stare at your shaking hands, the image going in and out of focus. Blood seeps from your mangled skin as you clench them into fists, numb to the glass sticking haphazardly from them.

 

There is blood on your shirt, on your pants, on your face. Faintly, you hear someone bang on your front door. The doorbell rings three times. The pounding in your head increases in its intensity. The cheering and merriment filtering through the walls grow into a crescendo as your name is called. You look around, trying to stand. You end up knocking all of the papers littering your messy desk in the process, each one covered in lyrics so full of heartbreak and loneliness that you can’t bring yourself to look at them once you finish and place your pen down beside them.

As you look up, you realize that you’ve finally gone insane.

 

“Sara?” The name falls from your lips in a drunken slur of disbelief before you can stop it. The rowdy crowd next door begins counting down to the new year. You can do nothing but stare, frozen.

She’s wearing skinny jeans and a grey sweater, standing in the doorway of your bedroom, illuminated by the light spilling in from the numerous celebrations and streetlights outside your window. She looks even more beautiful, more perfect in every way, than ever. You fail to stop the first tear as it drips from your heavy eyes, silent as it tracks passed the darkness residing beneath.

She opens her mouth to speak and suddenly you’re falling.

 

You wake cradled in her arms, the light beside your bed switched on. She’s crying silently, her body hunched over yours, her mouth forming a thin line as body shaking sobs wrack her thin body. You can feel her tears dripping off of her chin and onto your face as you reach up and caress her face lightly, smearing a streak of blood on her cheek. She just cries harder at your touch, pulling you closer into her chest. You’re content just to lay here in her presence even if this is nothing more than a dream. You’ll take what you can get at this point.

 

After awhile her cries slow and she cups one hand beneath your head, the other on your jaw, so softly you can’t help but sigh as the feeling.

“Tegan.” She whispers. “Tegan I am so sorry.”

You stare at one another, each pair of eyes searching the other’s. You want to be mad, furious even, for the way she left you, broken down and raw, but you simply can’t. You love her too much, and it kills you inside.

 

You begin to feel the pain in your hands as you lift them up, jagged shards covered in blood falling from them and onto the mattress beside you, staining the sheets with scattered droplets of crimson. She gasps when she sees them, eyes watering as she captures your scarred wrists in her fingers, her grip so feather light and gentle that you can’t help the shudder that echoes through your hollow chest.

She helps you stand as you stagger dizzily, her protective arms guiding you towards the dim buzzing light that illuminates your bathroom as she flicks it on.

“Tegan.” She gasps as she sees the damage, both fresh and fading. “Tegan.”

The light gets brighter as you sit on the edge of the tub, body swaying and leaning forward as your drooping eyelids begin to fail you.

“Just a little longer Tee.” She murmurs, her fingertips on her jaw as she kneels between your legs. You sniff, wincing as she pulls out every single tiny piece of glass from your abused fingers and palms with a pair of tweezers, setting them ablaze with the alcohol soaked pads she found in the first aid kit that has lain untouched beneath your sink since you bought this apartment.

She shushes your barely audible whimpers softly, filling your ears with soothing words and apology after apology. You wish she wouldn’t be so apologetic. It’s not her fault that you were born such a sick and twisted creature.

 

She helps you back into your room, pushing aside the mounds of clothing you’ve left unclean on the floor. It’s been awhile since you’ve stopped caring.

Easing you back down onto the bed, she stands towering over you, brushing a few stray hairs from your sweat and tear streaked face.

“Please hold me.” You manage to get out, your tongue, thick with drink, confusing your words. You watch as her face twists in indecision.

“Please.” You moan. “Please.”

She lies beside you without another word, lifting you so that your body rests between her legs, your cheek cushioned between her breasts, her lithe fingers running beneath your dirty t-shirt and soothing you with their long strokes up and down your protruding spine.

 

Slowly, you slip into darkness.


	3. Tyler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another old oneshot I decided to rewrite tonight and post instead of working on my new project or on CL and I's fic Serendipity. It does feature FTM Tegan so if that isn't your thing, read no further. Anyways, let me know if you enjoy it!

I spent five years without the woman I’d fruitlessly believed to be my soulmate. She’d been my everything; my safe place, the one constant I could always count on in my life. So what if she was my sister? Our love had known no boundaries, and the only thing we’d cared about was that we were in love and together. That was all that mattered... or at least I thought it did. About a year after we got our own place, almost overnight, she began to change, rapidly becoming a warped and distorted shadow of her former self.  She wasn’t Tegan anymore.

At first Tegan began disappearing from the little loft apartment we shared together for days at a time, drinking heavily every night. Then we’d started getting into heated arguments that would result in bruises that left dark splotches on my pale skin for days and whatever she’d happened to get her hands on that time broken or smashed.  I’d gradually grew more and more worried for her, pleading for her to get help, screaming and crying when I’d found the little baggies of white powder in the pockets of her jeans while doing laundry, begging her to change her newfound self-destructive ways. I’d wanted the woman I loved back, not this bottomless nightmare of a person that had seemed to take her place overnight.

We got to the point where we no longer shared a bed, her passed out on the couch while I’d lay awake long into the night on our queen mattress, my hand resting on the cold side of the bed that used dip slightly with the weight of another body, her body. The last night I ever saw her she’d came home bleeding from her nose and coughing up blood. Refusing to go to the hospital, she’d sat silently on the edge of the tub in our bathroom as I’d gently cleaned her wounds the best I could.

That night she disappeared without a trace and didn’t return.

I fell into a deep depression when I realized she wasn’t going to come home. I feared every call that came through my phone with an unknown number, expecting the voice on the other line to be a hospital or the police department telling me my sister, my lover, was dead. I threw myself into my job at the local law firm I’d scored a job at during those idyllic moments when we’d still been happy together. Relationships with other people, romantic or not, were non-existent. I’d fed my loneliness with a massive stack of books that I’d supplemented weekly and a well-used Netflix account, hiding under mounds of blankets in the dark and sobbing pitifully late at night.

I didn’t live. I merely went through the motions, hoping one day that the girl I’d grew up with, the girl I’d fallen in love with, would come walking our front door with that gummy smile on her face and tell me that everything was going to be okay. Instead, I’d gotten silence, cold sheets and memories that triggered awful pangs of loss.

A piece of me was missing. I was alone.  
   
-

After three long years I’d met Emy, an artist with a warm smile and long dark hair who’d moved into the apartment across the hall from mine. Even though I’d resisted at first, I fell into a sort of love with her, and we began a relationship. We’d took it slow, and even though I knew I could never love her like I had loved Tegan, for that was the truest form of love one could ever know, I accepted what I could and took the relief that it was enough to at least partially fill in the emptiness I felt inside.

I’d always felt an inane sense of guilt whenever we had sex. It wasn’t making love to me, that I could only have achieved with Tegan. No, this was more for her gratification and enjoyment than mine. I had been celibate for three years since Tegan had left me, and sex with anyone that wasn’t her wasn’t appealing at all. I dove into the act with the goal of pleasing her only, refusing any attempts she would make at returning the pleasure I was offering. Eventually, she gave up, and we’d found ourselves falling into a sort of a routine.  
   
Though she still technically owned the apartment across the hall, over the next two years she’d managed to gradually move the majority of her things in with me. Our bond was strong, and after awhile, the pain of Tegan’s disappearance didn’t hurt quite the same as it used too. I’d begun to have a social life again, going out to wine tastings and showings of Emy’s art at local galleries. I’d began to feel human again.  
   
On the anniversary of the fifth-year Tegan left me, I’d asked Emy to move in with me officially. She’d laughed in reply and asked what took me so long. Instead of answering I’d pulled her into a kiss and we called the landlord together… not at the same time of course.

Three weeks later, the remnants of what was left at her place had made it safely across to mine, and I’d found myself feeling completely okay since Tegan had disappeared without a word. Things were finally starting to lighten up, and though I still missed Tegan in the dead of the night during my cronic bouts of insomnia, the longing for her wasn’t the same nor nearly as crippling as it had been for all those years. Slowly but surely, Emy was repairing the damage, cleaning up the debris. I was going to be okay.  
   
One week later a new person moved into Emy’s place. We saw him in the hallway in passing a few days after he’d moved in, and off and on in the weeks that followed. He was always wearing a button up shirt or a loose fitting t-shirt and skinny jeans. He was short and wiry, slightly taller than my 5’2, and he’d always had on a pair of worn looking boots or ratty converse. A well-loved looking grey beanie never seemed to leave his head, and he sported a neatly trimmed beard and glasses. He’d looked like any other New York City hipster, and I wrote him and the messenger bag he always had across his lean torso off rather quickly. I wish I knew then what I know today the first time we spoke.

-

It was awkward at first when opened the door to find him out in the hallway, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. He’d said his name was Tyler and that his cat had gotten loose, telling me that he wasn’t sure what to do and I’d immediately said I would help him, calling to Emy who was in our bedroom and inviting him inside.

He was hesitant to enter at first, but I’d managed to coax him into our living room with a few reassuring words, sitting him down on the couch before going into the bedroom and collecting Emy from her painting for a moment to help. Sitting down opposite from him we’d both listened carefully as he explained that his cat’s name was Holiday and she escaped when he had accidentally left the door open slightly while bringing in groceries that morning. He’d said he was scared because it was mid-December and he didn’t want her to freeze to death.

After reassuring him that we would both help, Emy and I’d grabbed our coats and followed him back out into the hall. His door was open, and as he’d went to close it, what I’d assumed was his cat shot though his legs and back inside the apartment. He’d disappeared after her and we both waited, giggling under our breath as we could hear him crashing around inside. After a minute he’d returned with the most adorable kitten I had ever seen cradled in his arms, thanking us gratefully for volunteering to assist him. I’d fallen in love, even if I didn’t know it yet.  
   
-

It was another month before I talked to Tyler again, strangely giddy to see him once more when he‘d arrived to my rescue.

I’d had forgotten about the dinner I had put in the stove earlier, managing to set the fire alarms off with my negligent cooking. Smoke had filled the kitchen with little warning and I’d panicked, running from smoke detector to smoke detector with a dish towel trying to fan the clouds away so they would cease their now unneeded calls. Emy had been out with a friend getting coffee and I so was fighting this battle alone, becoming more and more unsure of what to do. 

Then, like a movie scene, my door had flown open and Tyler appeared through the smoke. I can’t help but recall that the first thing I’d noticed was how he ‘d been wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants as he’d asked me panicked over the beeping if I was okay. I’d tried my best not to stare at his toned upper body, eyes briefly falling upon faded scars, as I told him I was fine but that I didn’t know how to stop the alarms from going off. He’d stared me for a second, before quickly turning around and climbing up onto a chair to pull all the batteries from each of them. After he left, I’ looked down and blushed, realizing a little too late that I wasn’t wearing a bra.  
   
-

I started to really get to know Tyler after offhandedly inviting him over to one of Emy and I’s regular movie nights one afternoon. The only condition, I had joked, was that he had to bring Holiday, to which he’d had laughed and gladly obliged.

He was always a little distant, even when we’d truly started to become friends. I’d slowly started to notice how he would stare at me with a strange, distant look, when he thought I wasn’t looking. His eyes had seemed sad even when he was laughing. I, in turn, liked to study the colorful array of tattoos covering his arms , mind wandering as I’d wondered what each on meant.

-

One night Emy had gone out to catch up with a couple old friends on a girl’s night, leaving me alone and bored. I’d called Tyler (we had exchanged numbers once we started having our movie nights) and he’d came over. After the second movie I’d begun to feel sleepy, unconsciously scooting over on the couch slightly and leaning my head on his shoulder. He’d immediately stiffened and stuttered that he had to go, collected his cat, and leaving with a quiet apology. I’d watched him go, wondering what it was about me that occasionally caused him to act so strangely.

I didn’t see him for two days afterwards, eventually cornering him in the hall and telling him that I was sorry. He’d just shook his head and muttered something incomprehensible before pulling me into a tight hug. I’d patted his back nervously until he let go and we went our separate ways.  
As I watched him go, I found myself wishing he hadn’t pulled away that night before as I watched his retreating figure disappear down the hall. 

I’d had always identified as a lesbian, so these feelings were foreign and strange. No, I couldn’t think like that, I’d had Emy and she was everything I thought I needed if I couldn’t have Tegan. Why would I throw all of that away for a boy? It was wrong I’d told myself, and so I’d hid my feelings and locked them tightly into the back of my mind. I was happy now, I reminded myself. That night Tegan haunted my dreams.  
   
The feelings I’d begun to harbor stayed hidden until Emy and I had a massive fight one evening several days later. She’d left in a storm of rage and Tyler had appeared at the door shortly thereafter, hesitantly asking if I was okay. I could only shake my head and burrow into his chest as his arms automatically finding their way around my trembling form. I couldn’t help but feel as though Emy wouldn’t return just like Tegan didn’t, which was agonizing to consider, and I’d sobbed heavily at the thought, knees buckling. Tyler helped me to the ground and cradled me to his chest.

We stayed like that for a long time.  
   
-

Emy did return eventually, and when she showed up at the door Tyler got up and left without a word left. As Emy pulled me into a hug and told me she was sorry, the only thing I could think of was that I wished it was Tyler’s arms that encircled me still, and not hers. I cried myself to sleep that night.  
   
-

I began to suspect something was off when Tyler and I had gone off to go get coffee together one cold breezy early February day. I’d ended up getting hot chocolate instead, the whipped cream giving me a mustache as I took my first sip. We were sitting on a bench in central park under a tree, a fresh snow still settling from the night before on the ground. Hesitantly, Tyler had reached over and tenderly wiped the cream off my upper lip with his thumb, laughing as he’d and told me “You’re so adorable Sasa!”

I’d immediately perked up at the sound of the nickname. No one had ever called me Sasa except for Tegan. How had he know that? He must have realized his mistake as he caught sight of my puzzled face, offering a hurried mumbled explanation that didn’t make any sense. I’d said nothing, thoughts running through my head taking all of my attention away from the moment. I’d let it pass, confusion and old painful memories muddling my brain.

-  
   
After that instance, I began to notice little things here and there now that I was looking. He and Tegan both had that same gummy dorky smile, that same walk. This couldn’t all be a coincidence, and two weeks after his first slip up, I’d came to his door and confronted him. At first he’d tried to deny it, stumbling over his words, eyes wide and panicky, voice shaking. Eventually, however, he’d given in, tears running down his face as he told me that he used to be that broken girl that ran away and left me all those years ago. He was the girl that drank and made stupid decisions because she didn’t know how to say what she was hiding inside. He gulped as he said that he was the girl that laid her hands on the love of his life and the best thing to ever happen to him because what was inside had been too much.

It had finally all started to make sense. Tegan was never meant to be Tegan. Tegan was supposed to be Tyler, a boy. Instead, he’d become a young man trapped in a young woman’s body, trying too hard to push down his masculinity until it all came to a head and his life had spiraled out of control, taking the person he’d loved the most down with him.  
   
I’d cried as he’d hugged me before showing the long needles he plunges into his skin to inject what keeps him himself. He’d showed me his before and after surgery pictures, explaining everything to me in detail. He’d said that he would understand if I hated and wanted nothing to do with him ever again, especially now that I had Emy.

I’d told him in return that my soulmate was standing in front of me and that he wasn’t Emy. I’d said that he is the most handsome and brave man that I’d had ever met. Then I’d reached up, wrapping my hands around his neck, and finally kissed the human that I’d had been longing for after almost nine years of being apart.

That was the start of our new beginning. That moment was perfect… I couldn’t wait to get started.


End file.
